North Vancouver business man in hot water for Panama brokerage account

It’s a case of ‘it never hurts to ask,’ even if you’re looking for evidence of dodgy tax practices.

That’s what the BC Securities Commission found out in its investigation into the normally murky world of off-shore banking.

North Vancouver business man Mark Mcleary has been sanctioned for not filing insider reports for a number of trades he made as CEO and director of two companies working through a Panamanian brokerage account.

Manager of the BCSC’s special investigation unit, Lang Evans, tells CKNW that regulators in that country handed over information on McLeary, and around 100 other BC residents.

“Outside of McLeary, I don’t know where there’s any other security act violations by those persons, but they may receive a call from the taxman.”

Amid the growing fallout of the recent “Panama Papers” scandal, one might think this case connected, but Evans says it isn’t.

He was following a lead in Panama and asked for the regulators there to hand over the info, which to Evans’ surprise they did.

“In my experience it is the one and only time the Panamanian regulators provided us information as to trading, and we got two bankers boxes for about a hundred B.C. clients.”

McLeary had previously been fined $800,000 for market manipulation, and faces $25,000 more in sanctions for this case.